"I stood there trembling with anxiety and I felt a great, infinite scream through nature." This was how Edvard Munch described the experience while out walking that led him to paint The Scream (1893). For Caterina Albano, the themes of this painting – the "fragmented self" and existential angst – have become integral to our contemporary culture of fear, with its persistent anxiety about everything from pesticides in food, global warming and terrorism, to paedophiles and obesity. Albano uses modern art as a lens through which to examine how fear has become the zeitgeist of our age. In four chapters – bodies, objects, narratives and spaces – she shows how artworks such as John Isaacs' I can't help the way I feel (2003) illustrate anxieties about our bodies, the intrusion of the uncanny into everyday life (Rachel Whiteread's Place (Village), 2006-08), or our alienation from nature, an idea succinctly expressed by Gerhard Richter: "For us everything is empty." Well researched though this book is, it is let down by the writing, which cries out for some serious editing.